Good Gods, Y’all!

I fared rather poorly in the prerelease this weekend. I mean, I went 2-2, which isn’t terrible, but it was worse than I had hoped. I did learn a valuable lesson, however: if you have the protection, always leave mana up to protect your Akroan Conscriptor. That card is bonkers, even if it’s just getting you a second scry off your Sigiled Starfish.

But that’s not what I am here to talk about. So, at the prerelease a lucky (and deserving, and pretty cool, but also lucky) lady opened one of those fabled “God Packs.” You have heard about these, yes? They’re packs of Journey Into Nyx that, instead of containing the usual mix of commons and uncommons, just contain one each of the fifteen gods. It’s a virtual packtheon, and all the murmuring about how all the gods turn each other on got me to thinking. What would an all-god Commander deck look like?

First, we need a general. Now, there are many options to choose from, but for obvious flavor reasons I’m going to go with Karona, False God. She’s dangerous, but she’s the closest thing we have to a god lord, and it’s not like we HAVE to play her out until it’s advantageous for our board position.

Next, we need a solid manabase. I think, for the sake of convenience, I am just going to steal the manabase from Sliver Overlord (with the Gate theme traded out for the Temples, of course) and make any needed tweaks down the line. So, this is what the lands will look like:

So it sounds like it is time for another subtheme. Since the gods are all enchantment creatures, it seems like we could use a few enchantresses. Eidolon of Blossoms is an obvious inclusion, and going back to pick up Mesa Enchantress and Verduran Enchantress shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I am going to skip on Enchantress’s Presence and Argothian Enchantress because they’re pricy, and this deck doesn’t need to be…but also because three of these effects should be fine, and I am trying to cut back on overkill when it comes to redundancy in the effects I like.

By my count that leaves us with eight slots left. First, since we are anchoring ourselves in Theros block with the gods, let’s throw in Chromanticore. Sadly, that amazing card isn’t quite legendary enough to head up this deck, but it still deserves a slot. Also, since we’re looking to have some devotion, let’s include a Gray Merchant of Asphodel, since that card only gets better in multiplayer games. Courser of Kruphix is another super-solid card to play with, and it triggers our constellations, so it’s in. Eidolon of Countless Battles and Nighthowler both seem like strong enough bestow cards to make the cut.

Of course, this probably plays messy, and just because you can do something (in this case, play around with 15 gods), doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. But I like the idea of having my otherwise underwhelming creatures getting every static ability in the book and swinging in hastily, and I think, if the deck could get there, that might be a sufficiently powerful late game to make up for running a bunch of draft commons alongside a fairly pricey set of gods.

Anyway, that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this tour through the deck building process. Next week I’ll probably be talking more about the Journey Into Nyx cards that are making it into my EDH decks, and after that, who knows! I do, thank god. Gods. <end scene>